Thursday, August 27, 2009

I love distress inks and have a hard time passing up a challenge to use these inks. This card is done for a distress ink challenge hosted by Christie on Stamp-Shack. I used six different inks. Smooshed (that's a technical term! lol), them on my craft mat, sprayed them with water and wiped my card across them. Then I embossed the stamps with black embossing powder. The dragonfly seemed to blend too much into the background, so I added some green and purples to it using prismacolor pencils.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

I did this monochromatic blue card for a challenge on the Stamp Shack. The challenge was to do a card in any one shade of color. I decided to do it in blue. Last night, after playing a bit, I came up with a card I was somewhat pleased with. It needed a little bit more, but I wasn't sure. So, I decided to scan it first, just in case. Well, as luck would have it, right after I got it totally colored in with pencils, I ended up smudging it with some black pencil shavings that were left on the pencil sharpener, which came off onto to my hands when I sharpened my blue pencil. I tried to remove the smudges, but just made a bigger and bigger mess. So, I figured, heck with this and I'll just use the card I've already scanned. At 1:30 a.m. when I tried to add my card to the challenge gallery, I found out that I'd scanned my card at too high a dpi. I was a bit dissapointed, but not defeated. This morning I redid the card. This time I used feather stamps on the background paper instead of the eifel tower stamp. The sentiment is computer generated. I like this version a lot more. Hope you guys like the finished card.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Have you ever taken a class from a teacher that you just couldn't get enough of. Well, that's how felt when I took a Tim Holtz class two years ago. He returned this past weekend to teach a few classes and I was lucky enough to take his "Nostalgic Metal Memoirs" class. He makes a class so much fun that you don't even realize that 5 hours have passes since you sat down and that you're holding a small piece of art in your hands! This class was a combination of book binding and metal class. The book is 4 x 4 and has 90 pages hand sewn into it. Then we worked with metal sheets which was embossed, sanded, distressed and colored with AI inks. The sheets were then used like wrapping paper to cover the top and bottom covers. Once corners, a decorative clasp and crown on the front were added, the journal was finished. It always amazes me how everyone starts off with the same kit, the same instruction and comes up with a totally different and unique piece when you take one of Tim Holtz class. Oh, and did I say, how much fun this was? Loads!!